Arbeitsmarktbeteiligung älterer Arbeitnehmer: Berufstätigkeit im Ruhestand und Altersarmut

Abstract

My doctoral thesis is one of the few existing studies on post-retirement employment in Germany. It is the first study which implements a longitudinal micro-macro perspective. My research contributes new insights to the relationship of individuals' and firms' attributes and post-retirement employment. Another contribution to literature is the examination of actual employment behavior in retirement instead of only focusing on expectations of how people think they would behave once they are retired. The theoretical model shoes how changes within the society influences individual behavior and the development of post-retirement employment as one type within the concept of emerging patchwork biographies in society. By explaining individual behavior regarding post-retirement employment my research identifies attributes which can be used by public policy to support changes within the society. On the micro-level I pursue a two-stage design. First, I analyze the probability of pursuing post-retirement employment. Conditional on being in the labor force in retirement, in the second stage, I study transition times into different post-retirement jobs trajectories. In sum, my research shows that a considerable portion of retirees in Germany are employed. The probability of holding a post-retirement job is declining with increasing pension incomes. Retirees with higher labor market attachment show the highest probabilities of staying in their work environment after retirement. In contrast, retirees who are exposed to old age poverty are more likely to switch their working environments in retirement. I show that motivations for post-retirement employment are not mutually exclusive. This indicates that the political debate on post-retirement employment has to shift from discussing the reason for post-retirement employment, towards a debate about the heterogeneity of the workforce beyond retirement